1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to electronic device manufacturing. In particular, embodiments relate to a scrubber box for cleaning and/or polishing thin discs such as semiconductor substrates, wafers, compact discs, glass substrates and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Brush cleaning apparatus, sometimes referred to as scrubbers or scrubber boxes, are often utilized to polish and/or clean semiconductor substrates at one or more stages of an electronic device manufacturing process. For example, a cleaning device using cylindrical rollers having a pad material or a brush body disposed thereon may be caused to contact at least one major surface of a substrate to remove material from the major surface of the substrate. In one typical process, a cylindrical roller having a pad material disposed thereon is caused to rotate and urged against a rotating substrate to polish the substrate using a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. In another typical process, a cylindrical roller having a brush body disposed thereon is caused to rotate and urged against a rotating substrate to clean the substrate after a CMP process.
The processing surface of the pad material or brush body disposed on the cylindrical rollers in these devices tend to wear over time, which decreases removal rate or cleaning efficiency. Thus, the pad material or brush bodies may need to be replaced frequently in order to achieve desirable polishing or cleaning results. Replacement of the pad material or brush bodies is costly and causes downtime, which results in higher cost of ownership and lower throughput.
As the demand for integrated circuits continue to rise, chip manufactures have demanded semiconductor process tooling have increased throughput and more robust processing equipment. To meet such demands, apparatus and methods are being developed to maximize throughput, increase the service life of tool components, and decrease the cost of ownership.
What is needed is an apparatus and method for refreshing the processing surface of the pad material or the brush body disposed on the cylindrical rollers to obviate wear of the surface, remove agglomerated materials from the surface, as well as extend the useful lifetime of the pad material or the brush body.